Today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. Kicking off the 2015 lunar calendar and the year of the goat (or sheep or ram), today celebrates the emergence of spring, the coming together of families, and the arrival of good fortune. Given China’s prosperous technology evolution, the superpower has a lot to look forward to. According to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® data, the country is already home to the most mobile-savvy population on the planet, with nine out of every 10 metropolitan Chinese online adults using a smartphone; within the next two years, the nation will see an additional 200 million unique smartphone subscribers:

What will happen when the world’s largest mobile phone market becomes even bigger?

India’s online retail market is on the radar of global investors and eCommerce players, which have announced investments topping $3.6 billion in the past three months, including $2 billion in Amazon, $1 billion in Flipkart, and potentially $650 million in Snapdeal. Growth in India’s online retail market is powered by its fast-growing smartphone penetration, as customers are increasingly using their mobile phones to buy products online. More than half of Snapdeal’s and Flipkart’s sales and nearly 35% of

In his excellent book, The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande makes a compelling case for the power of simple checklists to avoid issues and mistakes during the decisioning process. Gawande's thesis is essentially this: A consistently applied, step-by-step checklist can be enormously valuable for a range of professionals from doctors to software designers to executives at major companies.

It’s no secret that mobile digital wallet technology is faring better in the US than in the UK; here in Boston, I use my LevelUp app at more than half of the retailers I visit (the app tells me I’ve visited one vendor 122 times!). However, only a few providers — including PayPal InStore, V.me by Visa, and Paydiant — are serving UK consumers. (Will Amazon be next?)

To understand the popularity gap for mobile digital wallet technology between the US and the UK, Forrester leveraged its Technographics® 360 research approach to get a holistic view of consumers. By analyzing data from our European Technographics Retail Survey, 2013, UK ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community, and UK Consumer Technographics Behavioral Study, November 2013 to March 2014, we evaluated desired features, strongest barriers, and current behavior associated with mobile digital wallet usage across UK consumers.

Our data shows that security is still a major concern among UK consumers, but the features they want in a mobile digital wallet are associated with an improved customer experience: These features make the purchase process more organized and convenient for customers, while also helping them save money along the way:

More than two years ago, Westpac – a bank in New Zealand – rolled out its “Cash Tank” feature for mobile bankers. Suddenly, customers could view key information like account balances without needing to log in (needless to say, it was and is opt-in-only). This new mobile banking feature immediately made a splash and was hailed as a small-but-impressive innovation. Other banks – such as Société Générale in France and Bank of the West in the US – offer similar pre-login information features.

This led folks like me to wonder: How might digital teams at banks take pre-login information further or make it even better?

Great digital strategy is often about pushing the limits – and not just in big ways. So Citi’s recent update to its smartphone apps is noteworthy for the bank’s decision to push the idea of pre-login information even further with Citi Mobile Snapshot. Citi customers who bank via their mobile phones can view not only balances but recent transactions without the hassle of logging in.

We spoke with Andres Wolberg-Stok, Global Head of Emerging Platforms and Services who shared with us a diagram that demonstrates the evolution of its mobile banking effort before and after Citi Mobile Snapshot (see below).

Recently, I’ve been on the go: I’ve just returned from a two-week sprint that took me to five different cities by plane, train, and car. Any frequent traveler is familiar with the logistical challenges that make multimode transport inconvenient – whether it's dashing between connecting flights or strategizing a taxi pickup to catch the train, switching between methods of transportation can make for a trying, disjointed journey overall.

As I settled into one flight by turning off my mobile phone and opening my laptop, it dawned on me that our path through the fragmented digital world is similar to my multiphase journey. As our physical location changes and as we realize the limitations of certain device experiences, we reach for various devices to carry out the task at hand – often, we complete one activity sequentially across screens and expect a seamless experience.

In fact, Forrester's Consumer Technographics® data shows that more than half of US online adults who begin tasks on their mobile phone continue them on their laptop. These consumers are most frequently purchasing products, checking emails, and researching items:

When it comes to mobile banking, customers' expectations are growing faster than the hair on a Chia Pet. So every year, Forrester reviews and scores the mobile banking offerings from the largest retail banks in the US across seven categories: Range of touchpoints; Enrollment and login; Account information; Transactional functionality; Service features; Cross-channel guidance; and marketing and sales. You can read the complete report here or by clicking on the link below:

Here is a sampling of some of our findings:

Chase and U.S. Bank tie for the top spot. With scores of 69 out of 100, Chase and U.S. Bank received the highest overall scores among the five banks we evaluated. Chase delivers the basics superbly, with a wide range of transactional features for transfers, bill pay, and P2P payments as well as strong cross-channel guidance for customers to contact Chase and find ATMs and branches. By contrast U.S. Bank stands out for more advanced features, including marketing and research for additional products, the ability to take a picture of a paper bill to enroll in bill pay, and the ability to pay another person using the contact list in a mobile phone.

In Canada, mobile banking is growing up faster than Justin Bieber. So from March 21 to April 9, 2014, Forrester reviewed and scored the mobile banking offerings from the five largest retail banks in Canada across seven categories: Range of touchpoints; Enrollment and login; Account information; Transactional functionality; Service features; Cross-channel guidance; and marketing and sales. You can read the complete report here or by clicking on the link below:

Here is a sampling of some of our findings:

CIBC earns the highest overall score with BMO and Scotiabank on its heels. With an overall score of 71 out of 100, CIBC received the highest overall scores among the five retail banks we evaluated, continuing the firm’s leadership in mobile banking since it launched its first iPhone app four years ago. But the other large Canadian banks are hot on CIBC’s trail: BMO and Scotiabank each earned a score of 70 out of 100 with impressive – and recent – overhauls of their mobile offerings. Scotiabank lets users apply for new products via mobile with pre-filled, mobile-optimized applications. BMO, meanwhile, ensures that all mobile money movement task flows are clear and consistent -- incorporating the same progress meter at the top of every screen.

Have you ever wondered if your home broadband is being effectively utilized? What if you could squeeze more out of your data allowance when outside your home? Telstra may have cracked this problem in Australia: It will invest more than A$100 million to build a nationwide Wi-Fi network as part of a strategy to increase connectivity in the places Australians live, work, and visit, including cafes, shops, sports grounds, and transport hubs.

The strategy aims to offer all Australians — whether or not they’re Telstra customers — access to 2 million Wi-Fi hotspots across the nation within five years. Telstra home broadband customers can install new gateways that allow them to securely share a portion of their bandwidth with other Telstra Wi-Fi customers in exchange for broadband access at Telstra hotspots across the nation. Non-Telstra customers can purchase daily hotspot access. The network, scheduled to launch in early 2015, will also reach overseas; an exclusive deal recently concluded between Telstra and global Wi-Fi provider Fon will allow people to connect at more than 12 million hotspots worldwide.

What It Means

Telstra has been at the forefront of improving the telco customer experience; its CEO, David Thodey, has been a major driving force behind that. This has put Telstra’s local competitors on notice and provides valuable lessons in how to raise the customer experience game:

“The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” This popular quote hit home at the Global Mobile Internet Conference panel on meeting the challenge of global connectivity that I moderated this week. Internet.org is a global partnership between technology leaders, nonprofits, local communities, and experts who are working together to bring the Internet to the two-thirds of the world’s population that don’t have it. Founding partners include Facebook, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Nokia (now Microsoft Mobile), and Opera.

What it means

The age of the customer is everywhere. This point was cemented at the conference. Device makers, network infrastructure providers, and app developers have to work with telecom providers to leverage existing 2G/3G assets to tap unconnected subscribers or miss out on business opportunities. Governments also need to help by, for example, providing consistent electricity to homes. Improving the customer experience can help businesses grow.